The Music of Chants

Thanks Bango for that great, nostalgic post yesterday.

Ah, Summerfest. Some very good times there over the years. Perhaps my fondest memory is the year MDilly and I went there with bc mi.

bc mi, being a sport, agreed to be the designated driver, which was key, because we had an hour and a half drive back to Madison at the end of the night.

The only problem was that MDilly and I took this as an opportunity to get shlamoozled like nobody's biz. We were incorrigible: saying crude things to strangers, frothing at the mouth, pissing wherever we pleased. bc mi might as well have brought a couple of australopithecuses.

At one point, after a particularly egregious breach of civility by MDilly, bc finally snapped.

"Cut it out," he demanded.

To which MDilly reached into his own nose, produced a foot-long green booger (ISYN), and smeared it the length of bc mi's T-shirt.

How do you respond to that? (As you're forming your answer, keep in mind that Mdilly may have once killed a man in Eau Claire with one punch.)

It was a long and unhappy ride home.

***

So we (cW, his pal Darren and me) had a rippin' good time at the Yankee game Wednesday night. Which was great, because we almost didn't go. The forecast was nasty as hell. Nasty as hell I say. It basically called for definite thundershowers followed by an evening of likely continuous rain. Since we didn't have tickets, we almost bailed and went out for cheeseburgers instead. But at the last minute, we decided to go for it.

I figured our odds were OK because cW was along for the trip. That dude leads a charmed life, breaks go his way all day long, so if we could rub some of his luck on the evening we'd be alright. I could rattle off like a hundred examples, but I won't. Let's just say that dogs step in his shit. So we went and the sky looked a little scary, like it was ready to dump a whole mess o' rain on our heads. But it didn't.

An inning went by, then two. I started to think we were going to avoid the rain. And in like the fourth inning, cW gave it a dismissive wave of the hand as if to say, "My work here is done. It ain't gonna rain."

And it didn't. Which gave us a chance to let loose with some good old fashioned chants. I had intended to print out that day's comments section so we could rattle them all off, but I was scared I'd somehow get distracted and leave it in the work printer so I held off. We had to go on memory, and we weren't drunk enough to fully cut loose, so what we have here is more of a start than anything else. I think this will be the norm for all Yankee games from now on. I can't wait.

Jeter came to bat in the fourth and cW was ready:



Whack! Base hit.

Giambi was next:



Smackeroonie! A line shot off the very top of the wall. Somebody's been eating his supplements...it was clear now that our chants were exerting some strange control over the course of the game, so we used them wisely.

With the Yankees ahead 3-1 in the sixth, I decided Jorge needed a quick pick-me-up, so I launched into a Deion classic:



Doink! Posada gets hit by a pitch and a near-fight ensues. Entertaining, productive, but a bit violent. We didn't want any injuries, so I passed the mic back to cW, who hit Bernie with this fine little number:



Kaboom! A ringing ground rule double to left. This shit works!

A few minutes later, with the Yanks safely up 6-1, we decided to spread the wealth. So we passed the torch over to the uh, lady who was sitting next to us. She cooed:



If you watch the end of that video again, you can see her leaning forward to say something to cW. Her words, I shit you not: "Make sure you got the 44D's on tape."

Ugh. Damon still cracked a double.

Anyway, it was a great game, some homers, some ejections, an angry, fan-taunting, Yankee-hating beer vendor, and some fine-ass chants.

On the way out, we stopped by Monument Park. I'd never been there before, and I had no idea they had a film archive. We watched a few old reels of The Babe and Joe D. and The Mick, and then I popped in a reel marked "World Series Fan Footage 10/5/42: Rizzuto AB, Bottom first". I was both trilled and terrified to see the following footage:



It was like the last shot in The Shining. Especially when I read later that little Scooter went yard.

Please add your chants to the archive, yo.

As for the chantdat winner, I liked 'em all. But I got to give it to PBdotC for this gem (among many fine efforts):

Hey [Indians Reserve Catcher Ryan] Garko, With the Unit on the Mound You'll Never Hit One Out of the Parko!

Honorable mention(and 5 GP's) goes to O.G. Chantmaster Deion Sandals:

for several impressive new variations, including Damon/Caymans and Posada/Enchilada. Also, 5 points for Moncrief for his ode to the Yankees. Furthermore, anybody who has the balls to scream out that whole thing at a game and make a video of it gets 20 points.

Today we have two non-googling challenges:

1) Who is Bango T. Bungle named after? (10 points, anyone who's ever been a resident of Wisconsin is ineligible)
2) What type of chips did I eat with my lunch today? (4 points, everyone eligible)